This book is a revised version of the well-known text A History of Modern Trinidad, 1783-1962, first published in 1981. It is a general history of Trinidad and Tobago up to national Independence, which provides both a comprehensive narrative account and an interpretation of the islands’ past. There is a new chapter which surveys the history of Tobago between 1763 and 1962, and a greatly expanded bibliography to reflect the research and publications since 1981, while other revisions have been made to the original text.

The book analyses the development of Trinidad and of Tobago as plantation colonies worked by enslaved Africans, and the transitions between British and French colonial rule (Tobago) and Spanish and British (Trinidad). After Emancipation, Trinidad entered a period of rapid development when people from many countries, but especially India, came to live and work there. Tobago’s economy declined, and in the 1880s and 1890s, it was linked administratively to Trinidad. In the twentieth century, the united colony moved towards political decolonisation and economic development based on oil. Independence came in 1962.

This book is intended for CAPE and tertiary level students and their teachers in the Caribbean and elsewhere, as well as the general reader in the region and its diaspora, especially in Britain and North America.